On Dwelling

Reviews / Votes

Dennis Skocz's On Dwelling: Poetry, Place, and Politics demonstrates the diverse resources of phenomenology to address a broad range of issues. Poetic dwelling, exhibited in the work of Sandburg, Frost, Xenophon, and Whitman, bestows meaning on underlying notions of space. Skocz intriguingly explores how Whitman's poetry can undo the polarizations at the time of the United States Civil War by highlighting the shared beauty of the national landscape. Skocz reveals phenomenology's spatial underpinnings, with Husserlian localized ownness opening to intersubjectivity, with Herodotus appreciating others in their spatial context, and with humanity being engaged with nature as an independent dialogic partner. Skocz analyzes xenophobia, which manifests the tension between localized and the abstract-which the Schutzian phenomenology of Consociates and Contemporaries illuminates; and he situates within this same tension the contrasts between Main Street and Wall Street. This polarity between the local and universal overflows into discussions of globalization and the contrasts between earthly and the cosmopolitan, both of which call for interlocution between representative of the poles at odds with each other. Besides showing the richness of phenomenology, this book displays remarkable multidisciplinary scope, encompassing philosophy, poetry, history, social science, economics, and ethics in a comprehensive synthesis -- Michael Barber, Saint Louis University On Dwelling is an ambitious meditation on humankind's relationship to the earth that it lives upon and the world that it has created. Drawing from a variety of Western sources and disciples, Dennis Skocz tries to think through what it means to dwell on Earth in the Anthropocene. His thoughts will certainly inspire animated discussions about the topics examined. The reader may feel a little less comfortable after engaging this work-and that is a good thing. -- Troy Paddock, Southern Connecticut State University